We are on “overload, overtired and over the Hill”…

  With McGyver busy in the corn and beans, I spent most of last week preparing for the elders to move back home.  There wasn’t much in the way of groceries in their home, so I got the basics.  After shopping for them for over a year, I know what they like.  I spent a day doing some light housekeeping before they moved back..A vacant home gathers dust too. The rain Gods took mercy on me, and Dennis couldn’t get into the fields Thursday, Friday or Saturday last week.  That freed him up to help me prepare for the move, and the actual move took place last Friday, Nov. 1st. WHEW!..If we have to move anybody else this year, it will be toooooo  soon!  If the elders do decide to move back to assisted living, they will be calling “Two Men and A Truck”!!  These “”two relatives with a truck” are about tapped out!!  The elders now have a full-time caregiver and so far they seem to be adjusting (key word SEEM!). 

Our target time to leave beautiful, cheap and politically forthright Illinois for the Winter is right around Thanksgiving..Our annual Thanksgiving Cave-A-Palooza will take place early, Nov. 23rd.  As usual, organized mayhem will abound! 

With Dennis playing farmer, I have been taking my walks by myself…One of my routes challenges my very limited “fence climbing” technique.  Even straddling that little fence takes it to a whole new level. Dennis and I love to walk through the Sandwich Fairgrounds.  We can go in at the open gate on the West side of the fairgrounds that the horse trainers use, but that is the one and only open gate..If I walk to the North end of the fairgrounds,  there IS no open gate…and I get bored walking back the same way I came…However , Dennis and I have discovered a way out of that North area…

You can see that chain link fence on the left that surrounds the entire East side of the fairgrounds…BUT!…hidden in a grove of trees is a shorter portion,  that has obviously been used by shiftless ne’re do wells ( like us) who are sneaking into the fair for free.  As luck (and my criminal sense)  would have it,  I can JUST get my short leg over it without severely injuring myself and ripping my pants (Did I mention there was barbed wire involved?)…1, 2, 3 ..and  WALA! I’m now OUTSIDE the fairgrounds and free to walk the 7 blocks back to our house, thus making a full circle of 2 miles..This route also has another advantage.  There are no parents zooming down the street to get their late sleeping kids to school on time!! It is a not only a safe walking route, but a somewhat “sinisterly sneaky” route, and you all know how I  sooo love to break the rules (as long as there is no arrest record involved).

 

 

It just so happened that it was extremely foggy that morning and I had a bit of trouble finding the hidden fence line…I can just imagine being interrogated by the Sandwich Fairgrounds caretaker…”What exactly were you trying to do, Mrs. Cave?  Escape from an empty fairgrounds?…You need to go home and take a nap…and get a life”…whatever.

 

 

 

Walking alone does have it’s other advantages, though.  I can take random photos here and there without Dennis stopping to wait for me, rolling his eyes..I swear I could be locked in a closet and still find something I thought was photo worthy…an errant dust bunny, a creepy cobweb ( yes, my closets have them), possibly a worn out pair of sneakers…These are sometimes intriguing things, no?  So, I take these opportunities to take some photos that would have caused McGyver to “eye roll”.

 

Here we have my old high school, now a grade school. The entrance is the same with the exception of those nasty metal doors, which were wood when I was there.  My Senior Class, 1966 was the last class to graduate from this school.  A new and improved high school was built shortly after. ( I only agree with the NEW part…improved? not so much). Notice the 2 Indian heads at the end of each side of the arch…and the neat scrolls and banner in the concrete…Those heads would probably be termed politically incorrect today..I’m surprised they have survived.

I believe this little town has some very interesting old buildings, too.  I love the bay windows built out over the street on the left…And in the right photo, the red brick building was an old hotel, and the taller, brown one was the old Pants Factory…My Mom worked there when they lost the roller skating rink in town.  That building has 3 floors and only women worked there, sewing canvas pants to be shipped out. I guess it was one of the few places that women could get a decent job.  This was in 1962.

 

As I have mentioned bitched about before, the railroad is a prevalent part of  Sandwich, and actually is how the town sprung up…Looking down those tracks on the right, you would find the end of our back yard…Sometimes, when I’m feeling brave, I walk in the ditch that runs along the yards that back up to the tracks…It’s a bit shorter than crossing the tracks and walking the sidewalk that runs in front of all the homes on Center St.  However, if I so much as hear a HINT of a train horn, I scamper through anyone’s back yard back to Center Street.  I like a good short cut as well as the next person, but I also want to prolong the inevitable need for hearing aids.!

So right now, it is nearly cocktail hour.  Dennis came back from the cornfield early because it started raining.  He just left for Conveyor Eddie’s for a beer..or two….  This leaves me alone and able to rant and ramble on the computer, probably causing you to shake your heads and fast forward to the end..…In answer to a few questions some of you have had.. no, I haven’t heard anything from ANY of my tests yet…Either no news is good news…or…somebody dropped the ball.  I am still on schedule for a fine needle biopsy on Nov. 15th and am counting the days for that little procedure…NOT!  Also on my calendar is a trip to Zionsville this weekend to watch the Wolff Cubs while their parents are off to the Dominican Republic for some “grown up” time…. in a villa down there.  Sounds absolutely WONDERFUL to me.  All 3 sets of grandparents (John’s parents are divorced and remarried to other people, thus he has 2 sets of grandparents) will be helping out.  We are playing tag team babysitting.  John’s parents get Wed. through Thursday, and we get Friday through Sunday…I am sooo realdy for a “kid fix”..This little trip will tap into my inner child, and is MUCH needed!!!

I wonder if McGyver would consider towing this  behind the Hiker????

“My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty.  She's ninety-seven now, and we don't know where the hell she is.”  ~Ellen DeGeneres